Tag: gun violence

Why do I bother? Why does anyone bother? The senseless rampages that continue to claim dozens of victims, including children, go on and on. It is clear the country simply does not care. We are a nation of the armed. Gun sales continue to rise. And there is no meaningful effort to stem the tide. In point of fact, it really does not matter.

Every time our children (and others) are sacrificed to the gun, as they were in the March 27 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, we afterward hear that it was a “senseless tragedy.” Far from it. Given our gun worship and their wide availability, deaths through gun violence unfortunately make perfect sense.

It happened again. This time seven people were killed, three of them 9-year-old children.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a beloved community is under threat. It is a dream of a community grounded in peace, justice and a fair sharing of resources and wealth. It is a dream rooted in the biblical vision of a covenant community, dear to the hearts of Hebrew prophets such as Amos and Micah, who were dear to the heart of King.

In closets, in gloveboxes, in drawers and nooks and crannies all around the Spokane Valley region, there are guns. How people relate to those guns is individual; the approach to firearms is a wildly diversified human reality — and the topic proves just as varied for Spokanites of different backgrounds and paradigms.

SpokaneFāVS hosted the Coffee Talk: ‘Building Dialogue for Justice in Response to Hate and Violence’.

I sit here today wondering what words I can possibly offer, yet again, to the tragedy of children, killed by another youth using guns, at an elementary school.